Are we sure Retro Studios is handling this port? Monster Games ported Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS and co-developed Tropical Freeze with Retro Studios. I'd expect Monster Games to be on port duty again.

Are we sure Retro Studios is handling this port? Monster Games ported Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS and co-developed Tropical Freeze with Retro Studios. I'd expect Monster Games to be on port duty again.

I was mostly making a joke, but I assumed that because Funky Kong was added, the original team was involved.

Retro hasn't released anything in almost four years now. Surely they've been doing more than porting Tropical Freeze to the Switch during that time.

We know they're not working on Metroid Prime and I would figure if they were working on a new DKC it would probably be far enough along by now that Nintendo would tie it in to the Tropical Freeze port somehow, like a "port now - new game next year!" announcement or something like that.

I think the point of the Direct-mini and the focus mostly on ports and remakes is that people got Switches for Christmas and Nintendo is trying to keep the releases flowing (and ports are easy padding) and let new Switch owners know that stuff is coming in the near future. The big announcements are for titles later in the year and 2019. They don't need to reveal that stuff now.

Yup, and if the release schedule for the back half of 2018 is underwhelming compared to 2017 (kind of inevitable), I'd imagine Nintendo would opportunistically rescind their latter day reveal strategies by making a bunch of early phase announcements at E3. Hell, they already felt the need with that Metroid Prime 4 logo.

If youâ€™re too lazy to click the link, it cites the LinkedIn profile of Shawn Pitman, the lead designer at Bandai Namco Singapore, who mentions both an â€śUnannounced First Person Shooter/Adventure Exclusive to the Nintendo Switchâ€ť and â€śRidge Racer 8 (Drift-based High Speed Car Racing Exclusive to the Nintendo Switch)â€ť as projects heâ€™s working on. Pitman has worked for Sony, Midway, and LucasArts. According to MobyGames, his past credits include Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and EverQuest.

Ridge Racer 8 is seemingly out of nowhere. The series has been largely dormant for several years save for a couple mobile games. The last main series installment, Ridge Racer 7, was released in 2006. Bringing it back exclusively on a successful platform with a dearth of comparable racing games makes sense. The other bit may be more interesting as people seem to be connecting it with Metroid Prime 4.

If true, itâ€™s nice that Nintendo and Namco Bandai are continuing their close working relationship. I feel like itâ€™s practically a given that the latter is also porting Super Smash Bros. for Wii U to Switch.

If youâ€™re too lazy to click the link, it cites the LinkedIn profile of Shawn Pitman, the lead designer at Bandai Namco Singapore, who mentions both an â€śUnannounced First Person Shooter/Adventure Exclusive to the Nintendo Switchâ€ť and â€śRidge Racer 8 (Drift-based High Speed Car Racing Exclusive to the Nintendo Switch)â€ť as projects heâ€™s working on. Pitman has worked for Sony, Midway, and LucasArts. According to MobyGames, his past credits include Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and EverQuest.

Ridge Racer 8 is seemingly out of nowhere. The series has been largely dormant for several years save for a couple mobile games. The last main series installment, Ridge Racer 7, was released in 2006. Bringing it back exclusively on a successful platform with a dearth of comparable racing games makes sense. The other bit may be more interesting as people seem to be connecting it with Metroid Prime 4.

If true, itâ€™s nice that Nintendo and Namco Bandai are continuing their close working relationship. I feel like itâ€™s practically a given that the latter is also porting Super Smash Bros. for Wii U to Switch.

Well, looks like there was confirmation that the FPS was MP4 from Eurogamer.

What else has Bandai Namco Singapore made? Have they done anything to suggest that they would be a good team for Metroid Prime 4?

To me the Metroid Prime games were a perfect storm of great but unconventional ideas coming together. It has the viewpoint of an FPS but isn't really an FPS. A fair amount of gamers had difficultly wrapping their head around that. Nintendo doesn't seem to quite understand that either so we got outright shooters like Metroid Prime Hunters and Federation Force using the Metroid Prime name. The last thing I want is some dev just making "Metroid the FPS" which unfortunately I would probably expect from 90% of the developers out there. If this is a hand picked dev that has demonstrated that they "get" Metroid Prime, great. But if it's just "hey these guys are available for work. Give them that Metroid franchise that gets great critical acclaim but doesn't sell in Japan so we don't really care about it" that's a problem.

I wanted my reaction to finding out who the dev was to be "oh yeah, that's a good choice!" not "who are they?"

What else had Retro Studios done to suggest they would be a good team for Metroid Prime?

Just about the post the same thing. Most of the original team was poached from id Software, Epic Games, Iguana Entertainment etc. Granted, many of them had experience making first-person games, but Metroid Prime was always more of an adventure game.

More importantly, Metroid Primeâ€™s development was in trouble until Nintendo stepped in, cancelled the rest of Retro Studiosâ€™ projects, and basically held the developersâ€™ hands until release. Every developer has to start somewhere, and many experiement with new things. Retro Studios, for example, went from Metroid to Donkey Kong.

The only other thing we really know about Metroid Prime 4 is that Kensuke Tanabe is once again leading the project. Okay, Federation Force was a weird choice, but Tanabe is still the Prime seriesâ€™ producer. That said, Iâ€™m not really sure how, at this point, thereâ€™s any reason for skepticism. Nintendo hasnâ€™t shown anything except a preliminary logo.

Hunters and Federation Force were clearly spinoffs, whereas this is a numbered sequel on a console, so I wouldn't worry about them straying too far from the original gameplay style. Nintendo producers tend to get the best out of other studios they work with, so even if this particular team doesn't have a track record of working on this kind of game I'm sure Tanabe and others at Nintendo will bring them up to speed.

What else had Retro Studios done to suggest they would be a good team for Metroid Prime?

I recall at the time there was a lot of nervousness then as well, particularly when the first info about it being first person came out.

There are a few things that were a little different then though. At that point Nintendo has never released a bad or even mediocre Metroid game. We also had Metroid Fusion in the works as well so even if Retro buggered up Metroid Prime we had a "proper" Metroid by the original team to fall back on. Today I don't really trust that Nintendo truly understands why Metroid is as well regarded as it is, and I had no reason to assume that when Metroid Prime was in development.

I'm not saying this team is certainly going to screw it up. I'm just wondering who they are so I can set appropriate expectations.

I think the last few years have offered ample evidence that NCL sees Retro's role in the company as something that goes beyond traditional game development cycles. Some people might see that as them getting the NST treatment but you can't look at their output and say it's been anything but stellar.

Today I don't really trust that Nintendo truly understands why Metroid is as well regarded as it is, and I had no reason to assume that when Metroid Prime was in development.

We just got a new 2D Metroid that was made by a studio that hadn't worked on the series before and was lead by Sakamoto, the guy people like yourself said couldn't be trusted with the series anymore because of Other M, and yet that game turned out fine. Yeah Mercury Stream has worked on a 2D Metroidvania with Mirror of Fate, but Samus Returns was higher quality then that which goes to show Sakamoto was able to get the best out of this team that hadn't made a real Metroid game before.

Like Samus Returns, Prime 4 is going to be a new game in the Prime series and will play like them. Acting like Hunters and Federation Force are a troublesome sign doesn't mean anything when Tanabe was involved in the original Prime trilogy and knows what these games are about and can guide any new team. Like Sakamoto knows 2D Metroid, Tanabe knows Prime and I don't see why we should doubt his ability to lead a team to make a traditional Prime game based on what he had a team do with 2 spinoffs which were intentionally designed to be different from the main Prime games.

The main focus of Metroid Prime 4 should honestly be environmental design. As long as they ain't screwing up the original combat mechanics- something that was similarly treated with respect in Samus Returns- they should focus on Metroid being their big, moody, graphical showcase- something that wasn't really treated with respect in Samus Returns.

I still hold strongly to the belief that the Smash 6 job listing was legit and Nintendo had Namco and the gang getting the next Smash ready just after DLC was finished. Maybe even before actually. Realizing that Zelda was more than enough for the year they decided to take even more time on the game to make sure Ridley was perfect.

There has been too much smoke about a new Smash coming soon and I don't doubt one bit that we will get it this year.

Edit: alright where did this new description come from? It disrespects Ridley and all who worship him! As I tell my kids, who I got to whoop?